While small businesses were shuttering throughout the pandemic, financial advisory firms for the most part remained in close contact with clients.
In fact, survey have indicated that many advisory firms did not skip a beat, even as the nation was in lockdown.
One such research conducted by industry consultant Philip Palaveev’s firm, Ensemble Practice, revealed that layoffs were near non-existent in the financial advisory industry. At the time of the study in August 2020, it found that 58% of advisors had hired for a new position during the crisis so far, and 42% of firms ended the first six months with more employees than they started with.
Another survey last year by Redtail Technology, a provider of client relationship management solutions for financial services firms, found that 86% of the 1,720 advisors polled were prepared with the appropriate technology for a seamless transition to work from home. The survey also found that 74% of advisory employees did not experience an interruption of their revenue stream due to working from home.
Many advisors said what set them apart and kept them afloat was the fact that they had robust technology in place that allowed for a quick pivot to working remotely. “We were able to flip the switch and not miss a beat, literally. The only thing we had to do was add peoples’ personal scanners at home to our network,” says Brett Bernstein, CEO and co-founder of XML Financial Group, which along with its affiliated broker-dealer XML Securities, LLC, has nearly $3 billion in client assets and offices in Maryland, Virginia and Colorado.
Like XML, many other firms have adopted flexible working schedules since the pandemic, and they say they are not about to part with it any time soon. Advisors think the flexible working schedule, far from the norm for many firms, has allowed their companies to escape being part of what has become known as the Great Resignation—people quiting their jobs as the pandemic fades. It also has attracted new hires.
According to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report on “quits rates,” in September financial services saw a decrease in the number of people quiting, while other sectors, such as leisure and hospitality, transportation and utilities, were at all-time highs.
Bernstein says he and his leadership team had come to a decision to bring people back into the office by Memorial Day, but as the weeks went by and the Delta variant surfaced, the return to the office date was changed to Labor Day. “But what we found was our team was really operating well, we were collaborating well, and we were able to communicate with our offices,” he said, adding that it also was important that clients were not demanding that they be in the office.
By Labor Day, XML staff were given the option of working from home indefinitely. “And the team has been really, really happy,” Bernstein reports. “At the end of the day, I could do my conference call and do my laundry.”
XML has recently brought on four new employees and the company’s flexible policy and other family-friendly benefits played a big role in their decisions to join the firm. One was a single mother, hired as a client services associate, who needed flexibility to care for her child, and another was a financial planner and the firm’s marketing director, who worked in corporate America and had spent the year traveling and wanted a better quality of life. Adding to its growth, the company added $1 billion in assets in July when it acquired Collins Investment Group in Bethesda, Md.